Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Laying the foundations for the local public services of the future
The Local Digital C-19 Challenge was launched in July 2020 to find Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) projects to help local authorities in England with their COVID-19 recovery and renewal efforts.
11 local government projects have been awarded a share of £800,000 to combat some of the challenges they faced as a direct result of COVID-19. You can read more about the challenge and process in this blog post.
Lead council: Newcastle City Council
Funding: £67,000
This project is developing a digital tool to identify where parts of a city are overcrowded and breach social distancing requirements, which disseminates information to citizens so they can make informed decisions about their movements.
Lead council: London Borough of Camden
Partners: Middlesbrough Council
Funding: £80,000
This project will develop practical approaches and tools for digital place-based engagement to ensure local people and businesses can still have a meaningful say on planning projects, including major planning applications and town centre renewals, as physical distancing restrictions are eased.
Lead councils: Greater London Authority, Camden Council and London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI)
Partners: Central Bedfordshire Council
Funding: £80,000
This project aims to improve information flows between councils and Voluntary Community Services (VCS) so that they can better support vulnerable residents and communities in the post COVID-19 environment. They will use their funding to discover, prototype and test a solution to data exchange that is reliable, scalable and reusable.
Lead councils: South Gloucestershire Council and Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames
Partners: Sutton Council, West Berkshire Council, LGSS, Oxford City Council, Staffordshire County Council, Northamptonshire County Council, Cambridgeshire County Council, Waltham Forest Council and London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI)
Funding: £80,000
This discovery project will aim to utilise work ongoing in all of the partner organisations and work that has previously been undertaken by LOTI coupled with citizen user research to develop a ‘playbook’ that will include systems and tools councils can use for various forms of public engagement.
Lead council: Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council
Funding: £34,000
This project will be using their funding to add extra functionality to a smartphone application they have developed, which will help to prevent overcrowding on its beaches by telling people how busy sections are so they can do their bit to help maintain social distancing.
You can download the app for free from Google Play and the Apple App Store.
Lead councils: East Riding of Yorkshire Council
Partners: North East Lincolnshire Council, Hull City Council and North Lincolnshire Council
Funding: £76,000
This project is designing future working patterns, a methodology to design new ways of working in a post COVID-19 world, to ensure staff remain safe, productive and develop innovations into future working practices.
Lead council: Manchester City Council
Funding: £80,000
This project will be using the lessons learnt from COVID-19 to improve the response of council neighbourhood teams to emergencies and need for support.
Lead council: The Greater Manchester Combined Authority
Funding: £80,000
This urgent project is looking to model and anticipate the forthcoming wave of demand to help vulnerable children and families emerge out of the constraints of lock down.
Lead council: Croydon Council & Leeds Council
Partners: Age UK Croydon & TechResort
Funding: £80,000
This project intends to tackle the real world challenges and chronic lack of digital capability in certain communities across the UK.
Individuals lack access to kit, connectivity and skills, while many SMEs lack the know-how to trade successfully.
The output will be a comprehensive playbook that addresses the needs of multiple audiences in one go, as well as factoring in the challenges introduced from lockdown and social distancing.
Lead council: Bolton Council
Funding: £23,000
The focus of this project is to create a low-contact face-to-face experience for residents who do not have access to digital alternatives. This will create digital meeting points at council access points to allow interaction with service officers via video-conferencing. These bookable appointments will let those residents who need to interact face-to-face to have a safer, reassuring experience and improve officer productivity.
This collaborative partnership is a joint venture combining two projects that had significant overlap between them. By working in partnership, the outputs from Huntingdonshire will support Tameside in the development of their standards, and in return Huntigdonshire will be able to test the standards they are developing “in the wild”. Due to the overlap, these projects will be working closely and splitting the allotted funds between them. There is more information on each below.
Funding: £120,000
Lead council: Tameside Council
Partners: Greater Manchester Combined Authority, iNetwork, iStandUK, North Yorkshire County Council, Sedgemoor District Council, and Somerset Councils
This project will propose the data and standards that can improve how local councils can find vulnerable people and households, and then promote a coordinated multi-agency response.
*This project is part of the Tameside and Huntingdonshire collaboration.
